Elmore Leonard Quotes

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

I find it very difficult to compose when I'm not playing.

What I try to impart to a musician is to really try to practice the instrument in a really sincere way. Learn as much about music as you possibly can. Learn composition. Study to try to create compositions of your own and put your own personal touch on your music.

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

Miles Davis is a major influence of mine in terms of the way that I am as a bandleader.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.

I worked with a guy, I can't think of his name, him and his wife, and one of them had a saxophone and the other played drums. It wasn't a regular job but I did a few gigs around home with them.

I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.

I just to put out the best records I can and perform the best I can.

The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected to contribute to the orchestration in progress, not simply to execute the score as it is written and rehearsed.

Painting, I think it's like jazz.

Chick Corea was a great influence on me, musically, as I was growing up.

I'm not the best person at putting words together. I can't give you the melody. But I might inspire somebody.

Live music is where you get the inspiration and the creativity.

Who knows ... we'll be playing Jazz and having a good time!

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.

Solos are like sex, so it's surprising to me that there aren't more guys playing them

My favorite aspect of music is the performance part!

I'm very creative, intuitive - I like to entertain.

Charlie Parker is my greatest inspiration as a saxophone player - anything that involves him entails a large amount of respect.

You know, John Coltrane has been sort of a god to me. Seems like, in a way, he didn't get the inspiration out of other musicians. He had it. When you hear a cat do a thing like that, you got to go along with him. I think I heard Coltrane before I really got close to Miles [Davis]. Miles had a tricky way of playing his horn that I didn't understand as much as I did Coltrane. I really didn't understand what Coltrane was doing, but it was so exciting the thing that he was doing.

In those days before hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and before learning of the so-called bebop era--by the way, I have some thoughts about that word, "bebop"--my first jazz hero ever, jazz improvisor hero, was Lester Young. I was a big "Lester Young-oholic," and all of my buddies were Lester Young-oholics. We'd get together and dissect, analyze, discuss, and listen to Lester Young's solos for hours and hours and hours. He was our god.